December 4, 2007
The Expert Behind the Fedora and Cigar: An Interview with Bert Randolph Sugar (Part 1) Posted by Allen Barra at 06:40 PM EST If Bert Randolph Sugar did not exist, it would have required Damon Runyan to invent him. A former editor of both The Ring and Boxing Illustrated magazines, the author and editor of more then 80 books, and sometime TV and film actor (including an appearance in Night and The City with Robert De Niro), Sugar can be seen on virtually any ESPN program on the history of boxing. He is instantly identifiable by his trademark fedora (black after Labor Day) and cigar. He was elected to the International Boxing Hal of Fame in January 2005. Sugar’s latest book is My View From the Corner (McGraw-Hill, 336 pages, $24.95), a collaboration with Angelo Dundee, the legendary boxing trainer of Muhammad Ali, to name just one of his many champions. Sugar answered these questions for us from his home in Chappaqua, New York. The interview is appearing in two parts. I suppose you’ve been asked this question more than any other, but who is the greatest fighter at any weight that you ever saw? Give us your top three. The word “greatest” takes on different meanings to different people. To be great you had to meet and beat great; you have to consider who a particular boxer faced—the quality of his opponents. Add to that his record, durability, boxing and punching prowess, peak years, reputation at the time, and on and on and on. You have to pretend all the fighters in your comparison are the same size—in modern terminology, ”best pound-for-pound” at any weight, any time. And here, aided and abetted by several fingers of truth serum at my neighborhood pub, are my top three picks of all time: One: Any and all descriptions for greatness can be applied to Sugar Ray Robinson, but no single description is adequate. He was boxing’s version of Rashomon; everyone saw something different. He could deliver a knockout blow going backward. He was seamless, with no fault lines. His left hand, held ever at the ready, was poetry in motion, his footwork was superior to any that had been seen in boxing up to that time; his hand speed and leverage were unmatchable. Robinson was unbeaten, untied, and unscored upon in his first 40 fights. It wasn’t until his forty-first, against Jake LaMotta, that he was beaten, losing a ten-round decision. It was a decision he would reverse five times. He was indeed the sweetest practitioner of “The Sweet Science.“ Two: Henry Armstrong, a physical loan shark who adopted General Clausewitz’s theory that the winning general is the one who can impose his will upon his enemy. No one who ever saw this fighter, known as “Hammerin’ Hank” or “Homicide Hank” or “Hurricane Hank,” will ever forget him: a nonstop punching machine, his style more rhythmic than headlong, his matchstick legs akimbo, his arms crossed in front of his face, racing the clock with each punch, and each punch punctuated with a grunt. A perpetual motion machine, Armstrong won 181 bouts, 101 of those by knockout, including winning the featherweight, welterweight, and lightweight championships, in that order, and holding all three titles simultaneously, the only man ever to do so. Three: Willie Pep was boxing’s version of the three-card monte player: Now you see him, now you don’t. His movements, which had the look of tap dancing with gloves on, left his opponents to speculate on their meaning and his fans to listen for accompanying music. Many of his opponents likened fighting the “Will o’ the Wisp” to battling a man in the hall of mirrors, unable to cope with an opponent they couldn’t find, let alone hit. Others compared the experience to catching moonbeams in a jar or chasing a shadow. Kid Campeche said after a fight in which Willie had pitched a no-hitter, “Fighting Willie Pep is like trying to stamp out a grass fire.“ Willie Pep’s long 22-year career was, in reality, two careers. In his first, Pep outclassed and outraced 109 of his 111 opponents, losing only to the grabbing, double-clutching Sammy Angott in a ten-round draw, and winning the featherweight crown at the ripe old age of 20. Then in February 1947 Pep suffered near-fatal injuries in an airplane crash. His career, if not his ability to walk, was thought to be over. But miraculously, less than six months later, he came back not only to walk, but to fight and win. Beaten by matchstick-thin Sandy Saddler for his title in 1948, he reversed the outcome in 1949 in as great a fight as the division has ever seen. The name Willie Pep will forever be remembered by fight fans as a name put to melody and symphony, a balletic will to grace and an ability to evade punches. The mixed martial arts type of fighting as exemplified by the pay-per-view success of the Ultimate Fighting Championship events has caused some people to say that boxing is now old-fashioned. How would you respond to that? Called by the Washington Post “gruesome junk” and by Senator John McCain “human cock fighting,” mixed martial “arts” is little more than glorified bar fighting without broken beer bottles, one step short of bomb throwing. Nevertheless, in our current culture of violence it seems to appeal to that 18- to 34-year-old segment of the market that has been weaned on violent video games and professional wrestling—substituting the cartoon violence of pro wrestling for the real violence of mixed martial “arts.“ All of which appeals to a viewing audience that possesses the attention span equal to the life of a mayfly. Hopefully it will go the way of demolition derbies, back to where it belongs: the bars. However, that doesn’t fully answer the question of whether boxing is “old-fashioned.” In a sense it is. For back in its salad days, that being for the first half and more of the twentieth century, boxing was one of the three major sports, along with baseball and horse racing. (Remember: this was before the 1958 Colts–Giants championship game elevated pro football to the higher echelon of sports!) Back in those days boxing was BIG and big news as well, The New York Times devoting five of its six front-page columns and three banner headlines to events like the Tunney–Dempsey fights. But following pro football, other sports soon began to take their place at the main sports table, courtesy of television, including pro and college basketball, college football, NASCAR, etc., etc., etc.; the et ceteras going on for about four or five pages or more. Hell, to watch ESPN and other channels, you’d think Texas Hold-’Em was a sport. Back in the late 1950s, just after the mob scandals came to light, Dan Parker of the New York Mirror wrote, “I’ve been at its bedside for 40 years waiting for boxing to die “ Well, here it is more than a half century later and boxing is still there. And will be there for many more years, all reports of its death—and even of its becoming “old-fashioned”—as exaggerated as those reports were of Mark Twain’s death. It’s too great of a sport not to be. Retract the obituaries, please! This interview concludes here.
|
